Roger Ebert Dies — Here’s Some Of His Funny Tweets, And Some Classic Movies He Gave Bad Reviews To

“At The Movies” with Siskel and Ebert was a must see in my house growing up. The surviving half of the duo, Roger Ebert, lost his battle with cancer yesterday, but he left a legacy of not only great movie reviews, but also grace while dealing with a horrific form of cancer.

Roger Ebert, the film critic who defined movie reviews in the age of television and then embraced Twitter with gusto, died after a long battle with cancer. He was 70. President Obama praised the critic in a statement after his death was reported. “For a generation of Americans – and especially Chicagoans – Roger was the movies. When he didn’t like a film, he was honest; when he did, he was effusive – capturing the unique power of the movies to take us somewhere magical. ”

“A Clockwork Orange” — “An ideological mess…It pretends to oppose the police state and forced mind control, but all it really does is celebrate the nastiness of its hero, Alex.”

“Dead Poets Society” — “It is, of course, inevitable that the brilliant teacher will eventually be fired from the school, and when his students stood on their desks to protest his dismissal, I was so moved, I wanted to throw up.”

“Fight Club” — “It’s macho porn — the sex movie Hollywood has been moving toward for years, in which eroticism between the sexes is replaced by all-guy locker-room fights. Women, who have had a lifetime of practice at dealing with little-boy posturing, will instinctively see through it; men may get off on the testosterone rush.”

“Full Metal Jacket” — “Many of the passages seem self-contained, some of them are masterful and others look like they came out of the bottom drawer. This is a strangely shapeless film from the man whose work usually imposes a ferociously consistent vision on his material.”

“Fast Times At Ridgemont High” — “How could they do this to Jennifer Jason Leigh? How could they put such a fresh and cheerful person into such a scuz-pit of a movie? Don’t they know they have a star on their hands?”